Ronald Neame Movies
Ronald Neame is the son of photographer/director Elwin Neame and the actress Ivy Close. He joined Elstree Studios in 1927 as a messenger and call boy, moved up to stills photographer, and was an assistant cameraman on Alfred Hitchcock's Blackmail (1929), the first English sound film. He served as a camera operator in the early '30s, and was elevated to director of photography in 1934. His most important films as cinematographer were Pygmalion (1938), Major Barbara (1939), In Which We Serve (1942), and One of Our Aircraft Is Missing (1942). In 1943, Neame formed a partnership with editor-turned-director David Lean and producer Anthony Havelock-Allan in Cineguild, an independent production company set up with support from England's Rank Organisation, through which the David Lean movies This Happy Breed, Blithe Spirit, Brief Encounter, Great Expectations, Oliver Twist, and The Passionate Friends were made. Neame turned to directing in the late '40s with Take My Life (1947), and after a series of entertaining but unexceptional films, including The Card (1952) and The Million Pound Note (1953), was responsible for the classics The Horse's Mouth (1959) and Tunes of Glory (1960), both starring Alec Guinness in two of the best roles of his career. Neame'sEscape from Zahrain (1962) was an underrated action thriller, which was surprisingly effective on a low budget, and his Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969) was a major late '60s hit that turned Maggie Smith into a major screen star. But it was in the '70s that Neame established himself -- very unexpectedly -- as a "money director," with The Poseidon Adventure (1972). This all-star adventure thriller, about a group of passengers struggling for survival when their ocean liner turns over in mid-voyage, proved a huge and sudden hit, becoming the top-grossing picture of 1972 and earning its money so fast, by Neame's account, that the studio couldn't hide it, and making him a rich man in the process. Neame's The Odessa File (1974) proved him adept at the thriller format, and his disaster movie Meteor (1979) effectively ended the disaster movie genre that he had begun with The Poseidon Adventure. His subsequent movies, including Hopscotch (1980) and First Monday in October (1981), have proved rather more uneven dramatically as well as at the box office. Neame's career has embraced more phases than almost any other filmmaker still even semi-active in the '90s, from the early days of British talkies, to the Golden Age of British cinema of the '40s to the silver age of the '50s, and the international and American markets of the '60s thru the '80s. He has managed to have hits in each phase of that career, and has proved effective at creating comedy, intimate, serious drama (Tunes of Glory is probably his best picture, with The Horse's Mouth a close second), as well as pulling together the special effects and acting required of the blockbuster all-star production. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide- 1966
This late-'60s spy spoof also borrows a page from late-'50s Alfred Hitchcock, with its everyday man becoming embroiled in the violent and baffling world of international espionage. When American businessman William Beddoes (James Garner) is traveling in Lisbon, he's mistaken for an English spy who's thought to possess a cache of industrial diamonds. Soon he is pursued by Aurora-Celeste da Costa (Melina Mercouri), Steve-Antonio (Tony Franciosa), and a host of other colorful troublemakers, all chasing him for something he doesn't have. Note Bert Kaempfert's music, introducing "Strangers In The Night". ~ Nicole Gagne, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- James Garner, Melina Mercouri, (more)
- 1936
In this comedy, a talented singer is hired to dub the voice of a star who has lost his own. During the film's premiere, news that he sang the songs slips out and suddenly he finds that he himself has become a star. Unfortunately he soon encounters unanticipated problems. He is especially concerned about his girl friend who dumped him in favor of the voiceless star. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
A Yank in the RAF is brash pilot Tim Baker (Tyrone Power), freshly arrived in London. Hoping to impress his nightclub-singer girlfriend Carol Brown (Betty Grable), Tim joins the Royal Air Force, immediately alienating everyone with his cockiness and "What the Hell?" attitude concerning the war. All this changes when Baker is obliged to fly under combat conditions, whereupon he shows what he's really made of. One of the most popular of the pre-Pearl Harbor "preparedness" films, A Yank in the RAF comes to an exciting conclusion, with actual newsreel footage of the evacuation of Dunkirk expertly matched with studio mockups. As a bonus, Betty Grable sings such catchy numbers as Another Little Dream Won't Do Us Any Harm. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Tyrone Power, Betty Grable, (more)
The Noel Coward/David Lean combination which turned out such dramas as Brief Encounter and This Happy Breed sets its sights on the viewer's funny bone with Blithe Spirit. Rex Harrison plays a novelist, newly married to straight-laced Constance Cummings. Via a seance, Harrison accidentally summons the spirit of his first wife, Kay Hammond. Believing that Hammond wants to ruin his marriage, Harrison enlists the services of local medium Madame Arcati (Margaret Rutherford) to exorcise Hammond's spirit. She fails, and in time, Harrison's second wife is killed; now he has two playful spirits on his hands! Technicolor is used throughout Blithe Spirit, with the ghosts' shimmering paleness providing contrast to the plain, everyday colors of Harrison's conservative country home. Blithe Spirit was later transformed into the Broadway musical High Spirits, with the original script bent out of shape to turn the character of Madame Arcati (played by Beatrice Lillie) into the leading role. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Rex Harrison, Constance Cummings, (more)
- 1937
In this romantic drama, a May-December relationship goes awry when the bride finds herself in love with her aged groom's young son, a dashing pilot. It seems that she and the pilot have met before. Matters are not helped by the fact that her husband is the young man's legal guardian. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Paul Lukas, Linden Travers, (more)
Based on Noël Coward's play "Still Life," Brief Encounter is a romantic, bittersweet drama about two married people who meet by chance in a London railway station and carry on an intense love affair. Sentimental yet down-to-earth and set in pre-World War II England, the film follows British housewife Laura Jesson (Celia Johnson), who is on her way home, but catches a cinder in her eye. By chance, she meets Dr. Alec Harvey (Trevor Howard), who removes it for her. The two talk for a few minutes and strike immediate sparks, but they end up catching different trains. However, both return to the station once a week to meet and, as the film progresses, they grow closer, sharing stories, hopes, and fears about their lives, marriages, and children. One day, when Alec's train is late, both become frantic that they will miss each other. When they finally find each other, they realize that they are in love. But what should be a joyous realization is fraught with tragedy, since both care greatly for their families. Howard and Johnson give flawless performances as two practical, married people who find themselves in a situation in which they know they can never be happy. ~ Don Kaye, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Celia Johnson, Trevor Howard, (more)
- 1937
Like Rick's Café Americain, the Café Colette is a rendezvous for virtually every spy in Europe. Greta Nissen stars as Russian princess Vanda Muroff, whose seductive powers are so overwhelming that one otherwise intelligent secret agent after another is willing to sacrifice all their top secrets to her on a moment's notice. Only Ryan (Paul Cavanaugh), an outwardly dissolute playboy, is able to resist Vanda's charms. It turns out that Ryan is actually a spy himself -- and one of the best in the business, at that! In the true Hitchcock tradition, the "secret papers" in Café Colette aren't nearly as important as the trials and tribulations undergone by the characters to get their hands on them. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Paul Cavanagh, Greta Nissen, (more)
- 1939
Cheer Boys Cheer is a provincial British comedy with slight Romeo and Juliet undertones. Edmund Gwenn and Moore Marriott play rival brewery owners who detest the sight of one another. Not so their children--the son of one man, the daughter of the other--who fall in love. One glance at the film's title, and the viewer knows that boy and girl will not take poison in the end. For so modest an endeavor, Cheer Boys Cheer has a remarkable talent lineup: Edmund Gwenn, Moore Marriott, Jimmy O'Dea, Nova Pilbeam and Alexander Knox in front of the cameras, and Walter Forde and Ronald Neame on the production end. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1938
A brief encounter forms the basis of this romantic drama. It all begins when Helen Bernardi meets Jim Wyndham in a London restaurant. They end up spending the night and falling hopelessly in love. Unfortunately, in the cold morning light, they realize that must go back to their separate lives. Jim must got to India on business while Helen must continue her scientific research. When Jim gets to India, the lovesick fellow realizes that life without her is nothing and immediately sends her a cable asking for her hand. The message never arrives. Five years pass. Jim comes back to London and discovers that Helen is happily married to her professor. But when Helen sees her old love, all her repressed passion rushed back causing her husband to become quite jealous. Just as the lovers are planning their escape, they overhear the professor defending Helen's honor to the servant who is accusing her of adultery. This naturally, gives the two pause. In the end they decide that it is better to keep things as they are. Gallant Jim walks away, and the Helen happily returns to her husband for a lifetime of marital bliss. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Paul Lukas, Linden Travers, (more)
- 1999
This documentary is a loving look at the cinematic genius of Alfred Hitchcock. Speeding through much of his early British works, the film focuses on his American classics, such as Marnie, Vertigo, and particularly Psycho. The movie also neatly examines Hitchcock's signature touches, from his inevitable brief cameo to his famous MacGuffin. Kevin Spacey narrates, and there are interviews with such film figures as Jonathan Demme, Peter Bogdanovich, and Janet Leigh. Dial H for Hitchcock was screened at the 1999 Denver Film Festival. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Kevin Spacey, Jonathan Demme, (more)
- 1935
Sir Francis Drake (Lang), first English circumnavigator of the globe, is featured in this exciting adventure with his amazing defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588 and a romance between the dashing sailor and a lady-in-waiting for Queen Elizabeth (Baxter). ~ All Movie Guide
- 1962
Essentially a chase film from beginning to end, this standard adventure yarn by director Ronald Neame is set in "Zahrain," a barely-disguised Middle Eastern nation. Sharif (Yul Brynner) is a rebel who has taken up arms against the country's corrupt government and the forces of Western imperialism. Now he and a small party of supporters (one a kidnapped woman about to become a supporter) take off across the desert with soldiers in hot pursuit. As the group flees through untamed country, there are brief moments of respite but no immediate escape in sight. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Yul Brynner, Sal Mineo, (more)
- 1937
In this comedy, a bumbling factory worker at a record manufacturing plant accidentally destroys an irreplaceable master disc. The quick thinking fellow switches the broken one with a recording of his own voice. As luck would have it, his song becomes a major hit. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
The election of Sandra Day O'Connor to the Supreme Court rendered the premise of First Monday in October anachronistic before the picture was even released; ignoring this, however, the film is supremely entertaining (no pun intended). Jill Clayburgh stars as Ruth Loomis, the first lady justice ever appointed to the Court. She's a conservative, while her principal foe on the bench, Dan Snow (Walter Matthau), is an old-line liberal. The film glides along on a predictable Tracy-Hepburn course until Snow comes to Loomis' defense when her late industrialist husband is accused of improprieties which might compromise Loomis' effectiveness. First Monday in October was adapted by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee from their own Broadway play, which starred Henry Fonda. Actress Martha Scott co-produced the film, while several other Hollywood veterans, including Herb Vigran and Ann Doran, dot the supporting case. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Walter Matthau, Jill Clayburgh, (more)
- 1986
- PG13
Victor Banerjee, the India-born star of David Lean's A Passage to India, is the central figure of director Ronald L. Neame's Foreign Body. Jobless in Calcutta, Banerjee steals money from his own father to afford passage to Britain. There he makes contact with his cousin Warren Mitchell, who arranges for Banerjee to get a job as a bus conductor. But when he begins to ardently pursue a lovely young white woman, Banerjee loses his job at the behest of the girl's influential father. His luck changes radically when Banerjee administers mouth-to-mouth resuscitation on a bus accident victim, whereupon he is mistaken for a doctor by friendly model Amanda Donohoe (probably the nicest she's ever been on film). Donohoe talks up the skills of this "new Indian doctor", and before he knows what has hit him, Banerjee is head physician to the Prime Minister of England--with virtually every woman in the land vying for his services in bed! Never letting on where it is heading next, Foreign Body is adapted from an equally tricky novel by Roderick Mann. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Victor Banerjee, Warren Mitchell, (more)
- 1966
Ideal and reality clash in this humorous tale of the heist that could have been. As scheming career cat burglar Harry Dean (Michael Cane) prepares to steal a priceless statue from the world's richest man, he seeks out the assistance of Eurasian showgirl Suzy Chang Shirley Maclaine). Though the likeable rogue's plan seems foolproof as he conveys the details to his partner Ram (Robert C. Carmel), the execution proves a detailed study in Murphy's Law. Constantly reinventing the plan as his originally ideal spirals ever more out of control, it seems as if Harry's heist is destined to fail. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Shirley MacLaine, Michael Caine, (more)
- 1934
Best known today as the wife of famed caricaturist Al Hirschfield, actress Dolly Haas enjoyed a long and fruitful career in England and Europe. One of Haas' best vehicles is the gender-bending British farce Girls Will Be Boys, in which she plays the granddaughter of the Duke of Bridgewater (Cyril Maude). Because her name in the film is "Pat," our heroine is assumed to be a boy by her woman-hating grandpop, and she does nothing to dissuade him of this belief, dressing up in drag when she goes to meet him for the first time. The rest of the picture is a reverse Charley's Aunt, with Pat endeavoring to be "one of the guys" under the most trying of circumstances (yes, she even smokes a cigar at one point). For a one-joke film, Girls Will be Boys is surprisingly substantial, managing to keep the audience amused for 71 minutes. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Dolly Haas, Cyril Maude, (more)
- 1936
A mid-1930s precursor to the 1956 Broadway musical Bells are Ringing, Give Her a Ring concerns a group of melodic telephone operators who get involved in the lives of their clients. One of these is Karen Swenson (Wendy Barrie), whose inability to mind her own business gets her in all sorts of jams. She finally stops butting in when her boss Paul Hedrick (Clifford Mollison) declares his love for her. American musical-comedy favorite Zelma O'Neal, who'd introduced "The Varsity Drag" in the original stage production of Good News, plays the gum-chewing comedy relief. Give Her a Ring is based on a German play titled Fraulein Falsch Verbunden. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Wendy Barrie, Erik Rhodes, (more)
Immediately grabbing the audience's attention with a heart-stopping opening scene in a dark graveyard, acclaimed British director David Lean realizes the cinematic potential of Charles Dickens' classic 1861 novel, and the result is considered by many to be one of the finest literary adaptations ever made as well as one of the greatest British films of all time. Crystallized into a tight 118-minute running time by Lean, Ronald Neame, and a corps of uncredited contributors, this is the story of young Pip, a lad of humble means whose training as a gentleman is bankrolled by a mysterious benefactor. Along the way, Pip falls in love with the fickle Estella, befriends the cheerfully insouciant Herbert Pocket, has memorable encounters with the escaped convict Magwitch and the lunatic dowager Miss Havisham, and almost (but not quite) forgets his modest origins as the foster son of kindhearted blacksmith Joe Gargery. The role of Pip is evenly divided between Anthony Wager as a child and John Mills as an adult; Alec Guinness makes his starring film debut as the jaunty Pocket; Jean Simmons and Valerie Hobson are costarred as the younger and older Estella; and Martita Hunt is unforgettable as the mad Miss Havisham ("It's a fine cake! A wedding cake! MINE!") Remade several times, Great Expectations resurfaced in 1989 as a TV miniseries, with Jean Simmons, originally the young Estella, tearing a passion to tatters as Miss Havisham; and in 1998 it was remade again, in a contemporary version, with Ethan Hawke, Gwyneth Paltrow, Robert DeNiro, and Anne Bancroft in the Miss Havisham role. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- John Mills, Valerie Hobson, (more)
- 1934
Too expensive for a "quota quickie" but not quite costly enough to qualify as an "A" picture, Happy is a shapeless but generally satisfying vehicle for several of England's top music-hall attractions. Stanley Lupino (Ida's dad) and Laddie Cliff star as Frank and George, a pair of nightclub musicians living in an attic owned by irascible Scotsman Simmy (Will Fyffe). Hoping to get rich quick, Frank invents a device that, when attached to an automobile, will immediately alert the police if the car is stolen. A millionaire car manufacturer is interested in the device, but agrees to purchase it only after his pretty daughter falls in love with Frank. Balking at the idea of marrying the girl for her money and influence, Frank nearly throws away his chance for true happiness, but it's all smiles and happy songs at the end. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Stanley Lupino, Laddie Cliff, (more)
- 1935
The son must pay for the crimes of the father when art-dealer Samson frames the son of the man who ruined his career. Samson sets the boy up to take the blame for the theft of $2,500--taken from Samson's gallery safe. Doubly unfortunate for Samson, the son has an alibi in Samson's wife, who is having an affair with the boy. ~ All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Greta Nissen, Margaret Lockwood, (more)
Walter Matthau plays a CIA agent who's been confined by office politics to a desk job. The disgruntled Matthau quits the service and heads to Europe, where he links up with former lover (an fellow ex-agent) Glenda Jackson. All goes smoothly until Matthau acts on the advice of yet another retired agent, Russian Herbert Lom, who suggests that Matthau write a tell-all autobiography. Spitefully, Matthau sends out copies of his first chapter to the heads of the CIA agencies throughout the world--and from that point on, he and Jackson don't have a moment's peace. This delights Matthau: now that all of his former colleagues are chasing after him, he has a reason to get up in the morning. As written by Brian Garfield, Hopscotch was a conventionally serious espionage novel. As adapted for the big screen by Garfield and Bryan Forbes, Hopscotch is a lively exercise in cloak-and-dagger comedy, even when the pursuit of Matthau turns deadly towards the end. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Walter Matthau, Glenda Jackson, (more)
This is a standard yet uneven drama featuring Judy Garland as Jenny Bowman, a powerful singer who obviously has a passion for the stage and performing. At the same time, she once had a passion for a certain British doctor, David Donne (Dirk Bogarde), that resulted in the birth of a baby boy. Unwilling to be a mom at this point in her career, Jenny gives the boy over to David, and he raises him as though he were an adopted son. David marries, and he and Jenny go their separate ways until many years have passed and, finding herself in London again, Jenny decides to visit her son. David is now a widower, and romantic sparks fly once he and Jenny get together -- raising the question of whether her passion for the stage is still stronger than her passion for David. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Judy Garland, Dirk Bogarde, (more)
